{"id":18307,"date":"2013-02-20T13:00:20","date_gmt":"2013-02-20T21:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=18307"},"modified":"2013-02-20T17:47:44","modified_gmt":"2013-02-21T01:47:44","slug":"did-lindsey-graham-accidentally-divulge-secret-drone-casualty-estimates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2013\/02\/20\/did-lindsey-graham-accidentally-divulge-secret-drone-casualty-estimates\/","title":{"rendered":"Did Lindsey Graham Accidentally Divulge Secret Drone Casualty Estimates?"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the things itching the people who demand more transparency and accountability in Obama’s drone war is that the secrecy of the program means that the government doesn’t publicly release casualty estimates. This has led\u00a0a number of journalistic and think-tank organizations<\/a> to do their due diligence and come up with their own estimates with their own methodologies. Even United Nations special rapporteur Ben Emmerson is in the beginning stages of an investigation<\/a> into drone deaths in Pakistan and Yemen.<\/p>\n

\"\"But none of this means the government doesn’t maintain their own, classified casualty estimates.<\/p>\n

Micah Zenko, at his CFR blog<\/a>, caught an obscure statement Sen. Lindsey Graham made yesterday during a speech\u00a0at the Easley Rotary Club in Easley, South Carolina. Graham issued the boilerplate defense of the drone war and then might have let something slip.<\/p>\n

Graham then added:\u00a0 \u201cWe\u2019ve killed 4,700<\/strong>. Sometimes you hit innocent people, and I hate that, but we\u2019re at war, and we\u2019ve taken out some very senior members of Al-Qaeda.\u201d His estimate of the death toll of suspected terrorists and militants by U.S. nonbattlefield targeted killings is higher than any other reported.My report,\u00a0Reforming U.S. Drone Strike Policies<\/a><\/em>, compiled the averages found within the ranges provided by\u00a0New America Foundation<\/a>,\u00a0Long War Journal<\/a>, and\u00a0The Bureau of Investigative Journalism<\/a>\u00a0(TBIJ) and produced a number about 1,200 fewer.<\/p>\n

It is notable that Graham\u2019s estimate nearly matches the TBIJ\u2019s highest estimated range for \u201ctotal reported killed\u201d in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia: 4,756. Either Graham is a big fan of TBIJ\u2019s work, or perhaps he inadvertently revealed the U.S. government\u2019s body count for nonbattlefield targeted killings.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It should be noted also that TBIJ, despite their rigorous methodology, was for a long time shunned by a mainstream media that refused to cite their casualty estimates, simply because it recorded the highest ones available. Newspapers and TV typically used the middle-of-the-road estimate, which was New America Foundation. Graham – with his seat on the Senate Armed Services Committee – is almost certainly privy to some secret government numbers on drone war casualties. The fact that he might of let it slip here – and the fact that it’s way higher than virtually anybody in the mainstream reports – should be something of a lesson, I think.<\/p>\n

Update<\/strong>: Just a reminder to help put this 4,700 in context: the Standford\/NYU study<\/a> of the drone war found that, “The number of ‘high-level’ targets killed as a percentage of total casualties is extremely low\u2014estimated at just 2%.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the things itching the people who demand more transparency and accountability in Obama’s drone war is that the secrecy of the program means that the government doesn’t publicly release casualty estimates. This has led\u00a0a number of journalistic and think-tank organizations to do their due diligence and come up with their own estimates with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":86,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-18307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/86"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18307"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18307\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18311,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18307\/revisions\/18311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18307"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=18307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}